A marketing plan to double your clients for small business owners who hate marketing

I was struggling to make it in my small business, but I was great at helping people. I just didn’t have enough clients to help. Until I learned how to create a small business marketing plan that worked.

I love helping people. For 23 years I helped kids and families get more confidence, gain more focus, better health and live happier lives.

I was great at it.

F0r the first three years of my business, I had dozens of success stories. Dozens of client testimonials. A small, but loyal following of raving fans.

But I didn’t have enough clients to sustain a business long term.

I grew my business very slow, it was all word of mouth, the clients I had told their friends and family about me.
I was grateful. But, I was growing too slow, cash flow was unpredictable at best.

It was pretty frustrating to be helping people achieve their goals, but financially I was worried how I was going to survive.

I figured if more people knew about what we did, I’d have more clients than I knew what to do with, more revenue, and more time to enjoy my family. I couldn’t just rely on the trickle of new clients I was getting from referrals.

I spent two years devouring every single marketing book I could get my hands on and I started creating a cheat sheet of every marketing idea that would work in my niche.

That worksheet turned into my own “marketing idea playbook.”

Then I created a one page worksheet that each month I would fill out planning my marketing for that month.
I would track how much each idea cost, and how many confirmed sales I made from each idea.

The more actions I took the more results I saw. For the first time in my business, I was making marketing a priority, and I was seeing results from my efforts.

Most of the ideas I was implementing were very time and labor intensive because at the time I couldn’t afford an advertising budget.

Some months my efforts paid off, some months didn’t.

One thing I can guarantee, if I hadn’t made marketing my business a priority, my business wouldn’t have survived.

I also found out that some months what worked great one month didn’t work the next, and then would work the following.

Results were never guaranteed. At first I found that to be frustrating, but the. Realized that it was just part of the ups and downs of business.

One thing always worked. The more people I personally talked to, and invited to work with me, the more new clients I was able to serve. The more I “shouted from the roof tops” the more people responded.

Since marketing results are fickle at times, I started scheduling at least four marketing campaigns every month.

This way, if one of my efforts fell flat in one area, I had three or more other ideas that would make up for it. As we grew, and had a small team, I was able to scale to six to eight campaigns running each month.

In addition to the marketing campaigns, we had marketing systems running. Systems like referral programs, monthly recurring events and community outreach.

Today, I make sure most of these are systematized. For example, every Friday we go out in the community and meet new people. Since we know it’s every Friday, it’s built in to our schedule. Every third Friday of the month we host an event that draws 20 to 50 new prospects. By making a marketing campaign built into the system, it becomes easier to be consistent.

There are other things that we can completely automate, like Facebook ads. Create a ad campaign that guarantees you that every $1 spent will bring you 2x or more return and keep it running indefinatly. Constantly feeding you new prospects.

It takes time to create a winning campaign, at first, most ads fall flat, you pay hundreds of dollars without any leads or sales. But, you keep tweaking and testing, and once you start seeing results, you can scale it up very easy. If you’ve ever spent money on ads and have felt like you’ve lost, remember that any time you do something new, you are actually paying for an education. Those dollars are not wasted. Keep tweaking and testing, and once you get it right, you will multiply your results.

Automating as much as you can while keeping the personal touch will help you grow much faster.

Creating a plan for your business marketing is very important. Many small businesses think of marketing as an after thought, a task that the have to do, not something they want to spend their time on.
Many businesses owners are great at their craft, they got into business because they loved what they do, but never took the time to be an expert marketer.

My tips for you.

Create a document in Word or in Evernote, title it “marketing playbook.” Every time you have a marketing idea, or hear someone in your industry say what they are doing for marketing, write it in your playbook.

Start researching Google on marketing for your business type. When you see an idea that sounds good, something you like, add it to your playbook.

Set aside $300 each month to spend on Facebook ads, that’s only $10 per day. Keep experimenting with your headline, your offer, your landing page, until you are getting leads (names and email addresses) for under $3. Put them into your CRM and send them an email every day for the first seven days (Automate this.)

Create a one page worksheet that has your marketing plan. On the 15th of the month, spend an hour filling out the worksheet for the following month. Commit your actions, time to following through. Put the items on your calendar. Assign your staff tasks. Start paying attention to the results you are getting and where things could have been improved for next time.

Nothing beats talking to more people about your business. Get out of your office and go to a networking event, or smile at more people and carry on a conversation. Build rapport with them, talk about the weather. Be friendly. Then, Invite people to try your business out. The more people you build a relationship, the more you will grow.

Note to self: add a link to my personal marketing worksheet and share it with my followers here so they can have a starting place to create their own. [coming soon]

What to do next.

If you are ready to organize your marketing, so you can turn more of your efforts on autopilot so you can enjoy more success and more time off, let’s have a conversation about how Uplevel can help you. You don’t have to work 14 hours a day, sacrifice your family and free time or struggle in your business for years. Uplevel has all the tools to automate most of your tasks, tools to keep track of your clients, and tools to increase your productivity. And it’s so simple, you and your team will enjoy it, even if you are allergic to technology. We are more than just software, we partner with you, guide you through the information overload, past the tech overwhelm. The right ideas, the right software with the help you need to succeed whether you are making money hand over fist and need to automate your business or if you are struggling to provide for your family.

Ready to learn more about Marketing Automation and how you can use it to turn more leads into paying customers?

We created a 5 part, quick course on marketing automation, how to get it working for your business AND start seeing results without spending all your free time creating it.

I’ll send you my 5 part free mini-course to your email box. Bite sized training, easy to understand.. and the best part: something you can take action on right away, and see results.

It’s not a 32 page PDF. It’s small and easy… no fluff. 5 Quick and educational emails. It will take you less than five minutes each day to read.

Why are we giving it away free when people would pay big bucks to have it?

Simple. At Uplevel, we provide all the tools necessary to fully automate your marketing. We also offer a “done for you” service to make all of this easy. OUR hope… you use our team to assist you or even do it for you. However, if you want to do it on your own and use our tools, that’s cool too. Either way, no obligation at all and we will never spam you.